forklift system trouble!

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by dduran

how do you get the elevator to lock in place once it has reached its desired height? we are using a pulley system to make it rise, but dont know how to lock it in place to prevent back drive.

There are a few ways you could make it stay in place, Eagle33199 presented most of the commonly used and effective methods.

You can try adding some sort of passive assist to the lift (think counter balance) in an attempt to get it to hold position when un-powered. The easiest way I can think of doing this would be to make a few large bands from surgical tubing and have them stretched when the lift is fully compressed so that they're always pulling the lift open (up).

Originally Posted by jsasaki

use your window motors and it wont back-drive

It'll also be slow...

[jsasaki]

Originally Posted by thefro526

There are a few ways you could make it stay in place, Eagle33199 presented most of the commonly used and effective methods.

You can try adding some sort of passive assist to the lift (think counter balance) in an attempt to get it to hold position when un-powered. The easiest way I can think of doing this would be to make a few large bands from surgical tubing and have them stretched when the lift is fully compressed so that they're always pulling the lift open (up).



It'll also be slow...

unlesssss you put a large drum on. we put two in parallel and works great for us.

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by jsasaki

unlesssss you put a large drum on. we put two in parallel and works great for us.

The large drum will speed it up, but greatly decrease the force effected in the end. In general, window motors simply don't have the power to do anything like that effectively (although if you can get it to work as well you need, great). We are going with 1 FP or 1 or 2 775s to get a quick lift in under 2 seconds (under 1 second, fingers crossed...).